Ex-president of Argentina faces arrest over alleged bombing coverup

Argentine former president and Buenos Aires senator Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner photographed swearing-in for a new mandate as senator, at the Congress in Buenos Aires.(Photo: Gabriel Cano, AFP/Getty Images)

BUENOS AIRES — A federal judge Thursday asked Argentina’s Senate to allow the arrest of former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner on a charge of treason for allegedly covering up the role of Iranians in a 1994 bomb attack on a Jewish center.

Judge Claudio Bonadio asked lawmakers to remove Kirchner's immunity from arrest, which she gained when she was sworn in as a senator last week.

Bonadio also ordered the arrest of several aides and allies of Kirchner, including former presidency secretary Carlos Zannini and activist Luis D’Elia on the same charges. Former foreign minister Hector Timerman was ordered held under house arrest due to health issues. Bonadio re-opened the case against Kirchner after it had been dismissed by another federal judge in February 2015.

Kirchner has previously called the case an "absurdity" and denied wrongdoing over Argentina’s worst terror attack — the July 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center, which left 85 dead and hundreds injured.

Kirchner, who was president from 2007 to 2015, has faced accusations of financial misdeeds and abuse of power since leaving office, “but this is a crime of an entirely different nature,” said Ricardo Saénz, an Argentine federal prosecutor. “You just can’t compare it. I’ve said this all along: The president betrayed her own citizens by agreeing to block justice for the murders of her own citizens. Everything else is insignificant.”

The quest for justice was hampered by years of corruption in the investigation of the bombing, which Israel and the U.S. have attributed to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terrorist group.

In an attempt to clear up the matter, Kirchner’s late husband Néstor appointed federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman to lead the probe in 2004.

After devoting almost a decade to the case, Nisman obtained Interpol “red notices,” or international arrest warrants, against five senior Iranian officials who he identified as the masterminds behind the bombing.

In 2011, Argentina was roiled by the revelation, immediately denied, that Kirchner had signed a secret memorandum with the Iranian government that would have resulted in the lifting of the red notices, that Interpol maintained on behalf of the Argentine government.

Writing in the independently owned newspaper Perfil, investigative journalist Pepe Eliaschev detailed the secret trips and machinations of Timerman, who led negotiations on Kirchner’s behalf, to achieve an agreement that would have annulled Nisman’s efforts to bring the accused to justice.

Eliaschev died of cancer in November 2014. The existence of the secret memorandum with Iran was proven months earlier.

On Jan. 14, 2015, Nisman presented charges of treason against Kirchner, then a sitting president, accusing her of negotiating away justice for 85 killed Argentinians. Days later, Nisman was found dead of a bullet wound.

Kirchner initially said the prosecutor had committed suicide, a claim sustained by Iranian foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif. But in October, the Argentine gendarmerie declared Nisman was murdered by two individuals who invaded his home. No one has since been charged in the prosecutor’s death.